JOHNSTOWN, Pennsylvania – Kamala Harris had a chance to rally the working class in deep red Pennsylvania.
She did an invite-only pit stop instead.
Hundreds of supporters chanted “Ka-ma-la” when the vice president arrived Friday at the Johnstown airport.
Driving a road lined with Trump signs on her way into town, Harris spoke for 30 minutes at local bookstore, Classic Elements, intending to show her support for small businesses.
Later in the day, she rallied in Wilkes-Barre, about 200 miles to the northeast.
But in Johnstown, both the airport and bookstore were by invitation only – to the chagrin of voters who wanted to hear what the vice president could offer their left-behind city.
“She’s hiding from most of the people,” Ed Luce told The Post. “She needs to convince a lot of the working poor people.”
Johnstown used to be a union Democratic stronghold.
After a 1977 flood destroyed the mines and mills, high-paying union jobs disappeared and the city gradually flipped red.
Trump won the surrounding county with over 67% of the vote in 2016 and 2020.
Pennsylvania’s 19 electoral votes are critical to victory this November.
“Old school Democrats are what the Republicans are now,” said Jim Ardary, referring to the values of hard work and love of country.
He spent his Friday keeping Trump protesters from disrupting Harris’s bookstore event.
An Obama-Trump voter, he’s excited about Trump’s recent proposal not to tax overtime pay.
“I still believe the Democrats are the working man’s party,” Greg Dadura, vice president of United Steelworkers Local 2632, told The Post.
He cited the Democratic Party’s support for union organizing and how Trump encouraged Tesla CEO Elon Musk to fire striking workers.
Still, Trump has the votes of many of Dadura’s union members, and workers who couldn’t get a union job after the Johnstown flood.
“The way the economy was going, I ended up out on the road doing industrial weed control,” said Luce, 63.
An Obama-Trump voter, Luce is weighing whether to vote Trump or Harris – or at all.
After Tuesday’s debate, Luce thought Trump might drop out.
As for Harris’s performance, “I wasn’t persuaded,” he said.
“Harris needs to show more of what her policies are. I still don’t know what she’s gonna do,” wishing she’d articulate how she’d raise wages and improve healthcare.
This might have been Luce’s opportunity to hear Harris, if he was invited to one of her events.
Donald Trump rallied in Johnstown on Sept. 4.
More than 6,000 people squeezed into the Cambria County War Memorial, with a line stretching back almost two miles.
They just had to register beforehand and get in line.
When the indoor venue reached capacity, thousands more watched Trump on a jumbotron outside the memorial-turned-hockey rink.
“She could have gone down to the War Memorial like Trump did,” Luce told The Post, but understands “city folks get scared out in the country.”
A shooter tried to assassinate Trump July 13, just 1.5 hours away in Butler, Pennsylvania.
“Knowing it’s MAGA land, she had some balls coming,” AJ Hasley, a veteran and cook, told The Post, but he felt insulted by Harris’s invite-only events.
“If you’re campaigning, your job is to get your word out to as many people as possible,” Hasley said.
“To do invite only, it makes me think she only cares about the rich people, the people going to give money to her campaign.”
Hasley, 39, hasn’t voted before. He plans to cast his first-ever ballot for Trump, but said, “I really don’t know that much about [Kamala]. I wouldn’t have minded to watch her talk.”
“I just don’t think it’s fair,” Arriana Dixon, a server who plans to vote for Harris, told The Post.
Dixon thought the vice president came to send a message: “I’m not forgetting about y’all.”
But wanting to know how Harris would secure the border, she said, “I would have liked to see her.”
“We didn’t even get a chance,” Phyllis Champine told The Post.
She proudly wore a homemade Kamala Harris blouse when Trump came to Johnstown.
Though Champine, 72, didn’t even get a glimpse of Harris as she waited outside the bookstore, she said, “Being near her was good enough for me.”
Still, “we all believe she’s coming back,” she said.
“We want her back.”
